The End of Everything, The Beginning of Something
by plecostomus-of-justice
Summary: Michael's Arrival Rated for swearing
1. Chapter 1

_This was originally part of a longer story that's never going to get finished, so I thought I'd put it up here anyway._

_Nope – still don't own it!_

_The End of Everything, The Beginning of Something_

_Hack the Intranet_

The young boy sat in front of the brightly lit computer, typing frantically. He was trembling from head to foot, only his hands on the keyboard remained steady, typing with precision.

"Shit, oh shit, oh shit" he mumbled under his breath as he flicked between windows, slamming the alt tab keys as though they were his mortal enemy.

How had it ever come to this? How had things got so bad with his parents that they would consider sending him away, to America of all places, to get rid of him.

It had all begun earlier that night, when Michael Lee, just turned fourteen and long-standing geek, had decided to do some adjusting on his home network. He had convinced his parents to let him build the network as a school project, really it was just so he could have internet in his room. It also, conveniently, allowed him to play with lots of software and learn his way round all sorts of firewalls and security programmes. This had come in very handy as he had begun to develop his computer skills in a more, well, illegal way. That night he was experimenting with a new firewall and antivirus product, one of these with a pretty interface and friendly messages, but which could be taken down with barely a keystroke. Once he got it to let him through, he decided to just check how much access he really did have by reading his parents email. It was there that he had seen the fateful email, in English, at the top of his parents' inbox.

"Dear Mr. and Mrs Lee,

Thank you for your enquiries regarding Therapeutic Programs for your son, Michael. I have reviewed the questionnaire you submitted to us and have found it shows clear evidence of at-risk behaviors. I would recommend you consider intervention treatment immediately and have attached a list of facilities which I believe would meet Michael's needs for therapy and behavior modification. Please do not hesitate to be in touch if you need any more advice during this difficult period

Yours,

Hannah Martin"

He read it with a growing feeling of dread, before opening the attached document. Flicking back from his parents' desktop, he began entering the names into a search engine. He had recently hacked a major news database, which allowed him to use its unique and powerful search functions, including some restricted database access, for free, and, as more and more hits lined up on his screen, he got more and more worried. Going back to his parents' machine, he began looking at their internet history. They had cleared it, no doubt assuming he might look at it, but they had no idea of the true extent of his abilities, and within a few minutes, he was looking at the list of websites they had visited in the last month. A few forum pages popped up at him, and he decided to see for himself the type of things his parents had been saying about him. A quick scan through the cookies gave him his parents' forum username, and he was quickly searching for their posts.

"Dear all,

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Anna-Marie Lee and I have a 14yr old son, Michael. He spends all his time in his room listening to loud music, he doesn't socialise, he doesn't speak to us. His teachers are concerned about his behavior, they say he is withdrawn and that he is under-achieving. He refuses to speak to me or his father, stays up all night and sleeps all day when not at school. When I try to talk to him, he just tells me to go away, or turns his music up in an openly defiant way. I think he might be involved in drugs or something illegal, I don't know what to do, I think we're losing him. Please help"

The boy was furious. How could they? How could they think all these things about him? Did they not realise that he didn't want to speak to them because he was sick of the fighting, that every time one of them spoke to him, they tried to manipulate him against the other, using him as a pawn in their games. He had heard them fighting about who talked to him most, he hated that they tried to make him choose between them, the two people he loved most in the world. So he had stopped talking to them, he turned his music up loudly, had bought a lock for his door and refused to open it to them. He spent time instead perfecting his skills, it always made him feel better when he penetrated a protected database, made him feel powerful, gave him control in a turbulent life.

Now he was so angry, he could concentrate on nothing except finding out where he was going to be sent. He looked around further, and found out just what being sent to America would entail, no access to computers, no chance to study the subjects he enjoyed, no computer games, no hacking, no chatting to his online friends. He would be there until he was eighteen, four years, might as well be four decades living by those rules. How would he keep his computer skills up to date if he was barred from using a PC or even reading about them? What about his English? Yes he could speak it, he spoke English at home with his parents, but he often had to translate the words from Japanese before he spoke. The only thing he did natively in English was swearing, he just didn't find the Japanese words did the job for him. He couldn't speak it to Americans his own age, he knew he had an accent, he knew he sounded like a fool, they would just laugh at him. This was going to destroy him, but he couldn't think of a way out. He looked at his window for a moment, contemplating running away, but he was streetwise enough to know that was stupid, that it would put him in a much worse position. If nothing else, he stood out like a sore thumb in Tokyo, an American guy with red hair who spoke fluent Japanese and was obviously not a tourist, nor a businessman.

"Monkeyfuck" he cursed,

then, just to be vindictive, hacked the hosting company which maintained the forums he was reading and took out their database.

He read the "cannot find server" error with satisfaction, but knew that it would not solve the problem at hand. A little bit of digging in the American Airlines database had revealed that a Lee, Michael was booked on a flight to the States in about 24 hours. They were not going to tell him, he realised, they were just going to take him on a plane then leave him when they arrived. He was furious, angry and upset. He felt completely powerless, for the first time since he had started hacking, three years ago. He contemplated trying to delete his name from the AA database, but he knew that if he did so, he would get caught, and hacking into a US database was a great way to get extradited, not to mention a good way for them to find out about his other activities. He laughed mirthlessly, that would just be fantastic, getting extradited to the US, getting locked up for some fairly hefty computer crime, whilst trying to avoid being sent there. No, he could not see a solution to this one, and so he sighed, bitterly.

"Oh well", he thought, "may as well have one last fling before I go",

and, cranking up the Rage Against the Machine, he turned to his keyboard again, mulling over who to go after for his one last hacking attempt.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hack the Planet_

He skipped past the Police firewall with the utmost ease. Skipping was really the only way to describe it, it was easy as falling off a log, a phrase he had read in a book sometime. Police, he thought. He'd been here before, and knew it was really quite boring. Still, he might get some inspiration from reading latest crime reports. He went straight for the murders, reading about some grisly death would probably make him feel a bit better, might give him some ideas for revenge when he was let out of the "program." Grinning at that thought, he began reading.

"On a preliminary inspection, the corpse was completely crushed as though it had been placed inside an overpressure chamber. At this point, STN-J arrived to take control of the investigation, and further inspection was impossible."

Once he found one report referring to STN-J, others began coming out of the woodwork. Some secret branch of the police that investigated the weirdest deaths.

"Now that could be fun", he thought, "definitely need supplies for that one."

With that he stood up, stretched, went to the loo then returned with crisps and cola. He knew that, with hacking, having to leave the screen at the wrong time could lead to some very unpleasant consequences. Returning to his seat, now fully equipped for the challenge, he put Killing in the Name Of on whilst he got organised, a bit of rebellion music to get him well in the mood to go. As the track faded out, and his trance music kicked in, he began, dancing through the internet, hunting down his quarry.

Finally he found it, it had been better concealed than most networks he'd gone after. Loading up his custom security analyser, he watched with interest as the program probed the firewalls and security features of the organisations' computers, providing readout after readout describing the security in detail. This was going to be tricky, he was very surprised it was better protected than the police, but, he supposed, it did seem to be a more secret organisation. He was starting to run through the list of possible vulnerabilities, realising he was going to have to think on the fly if he was going to bring this firewall down, when he saw it, the way in. Fingers flying over the keys, he made his way towards the back-door and did the virtual equivalent of opening the magnetic lock with a credit card. He was in. He took a deep breath and ran his hands along the wrist rest of his keyboard.

"Let's go look around," he whispered.

Once in, he gasped. It was Huge, far bigger than he was expecting, far bigger than the police reports had led him to believe. An enormous database stretching back eighty, no, a hundred, no, two hundred years. Files on thousands and thousands of people, people described as witches, people with strange extra-worldly powers, like the power to control fire or to crush and maim using only thoughts. He read about organisation called Factory, which dealt with the bodies of the witches. He made a mental note of the name, it would be an interesting place to check out on the Net after he had finished here. But then he went back to the database of people, their amazing powers and the great danger they posed to the world. What the hell had he found? He wondered. What had he stumbled across? He could see why it was hidden, why there had never been any mention of these incidents in the human world. It would cause panic. He closed his eyes for a second, horrified that something like this could be going, across the entire world, it seemed, with branches of witch hunters in Europe, America, even the Middle East, as well as Japan, right under the nose of the general population, undetected.

Undetected, shit! He glanced up at his Windows clock. He'd been in the database over an hour, he would have to leave, his initial scan had reported a status checker which activated every so often and would find him if he wasn't out in time. He ducked into the administration logs and began deleting the records of him coming in through the communications access ports. He was just about to slip out when the database refused to let him go. Every time he tried to leave, he ended up back at the initial administration page. He was trapped in, and trapped in with the logs of his hack still intact. He couldn't leave until they were gone, he knew that unless they were gone, he could be traced easily.

"Shit, shit, shit," he cursed, as he carried on trying to get out.

Nothing, he couldn't get to the logs either. He began chewing on the sides of his mouth, typing frantically, throwing commands at the administration program in the hope he could disable this security device, but nothing seemed to be working. Suddenly, he was ejected from the database and his computer rebooted. He stared in shock at the startup screen, frozen in place. It dawned on him that if he had been kicked out of the database, that probably meant they were coming for him. He pushed away from the desk and stood up, it was the last thing he had a chance to do.

Two men climbed in through his open window, aiming guns at him. They were dressed completely in black, their weapons gleaming in the light from his desklamp. One crossed the room in a couple of strides, grabbing him where he stood, too shocked to move or scream. The man placed a mask over his face, which must have been treated with some substance, because Michael felt himself going woozy. He was still conscious, but was unable to move or speak or focus properly as he was lifted out of the window by the two men and grabbed by others outside. He was handcuffed, he tried to tell them that there was no need, that he could not move even if he wanted to, but the paralysis was so complete he could not move his mouth to speak, and only a thin gurgling sound left his lips. They carried him towards a truck, and loaded him in to a coffin shaped space in the back of it. He was terrified, panicking inside, but unable to move, he just lay, his mind saying prayers to any and every god he could think of to get him out of this alive and in one piece. He felt the truck start up and pull away, then heard a hissing noise, and felt himself grow cold, so very cold. He took a breath, fighting the pain, and closed his eyes. This is it, he thought, as he felt consciousness fade.


	3. Chapter 3

_Busted and broken_

"Fuck, my head" he moaned in English as he struggled back to awareness.

He felt like he'd been kicked in the head by a footballer, and for a good while, all he could do was lie curled up holding his head as best he could, his wrists pinned together by handcuffs, crying over the pain. Eventually, though, it eased off enough for him to be able to raise his head and open his eyes. He winced as a bright light seared through his brain, and swore again as a lance of pain struck through him. Blinking against the pain, he looked up to see a man in a long black coat towering over him. He tried to force his eyes to focus, to get a better look at the man, but they refused to comply. Giving up, he let his head slam back down on the floor as consciousness slipped away and his world faded back into black.

When he next awoke, things were better. The pain had dulled to a tolerable ache, and he could sit up without being hit by waves of nausea. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked up again. The black-clad man was still standing over him, and Michael felt very small in his presence. The man reached down and passed him a glass of water

"Drink this, you'll feel better," he said gruffly.

Michael began to sip it slowly, feeling his stomach do cartwheels as his body fought to eliminate the drugs from his system. The man was right, though, the water was slowly bringing him back to some sort of useful consciousness, though he wasn't sure that was such a good thing as he felt the fear return.

"Where the hell am I?" he thought,

it really did not look like any sort of police station he'd ever been in, not that he'd been in _that_ many. He glanced up, debating whether to ask the man in front of him, when he heard the clicking of a door handle, and a younger, smaller woman came in.

"Amon, the Boss wants to see you with him, right away." She announced, glancing at him curiously.

"Well, that was one good sign, they were at least all speaking Japanese, so at least I haven't been taken out the country." He chuckled to himself,

that would just be too ironic, saving his parents the airfare by getting abducted to the US.

The man reached down to him and pulled him up by the arm, not harshly. He scrambled to his feet, relieved that the man retained his grip as the world began to spin uncontrollably.

"Just breathe" he heard from far away,

He took huge, gulping breaths to try and slow the spin. Gradually it eased, and the man looked him up and down before leading him out of the room and across to an elevator block. He walked slowly, still not feeling good. He had a strong urge to put his hands out to balance, and the inability to do this, because of the handcuffs, made the vertigo worse.

"The drugs hit you hard, you must be young." Said the man curtly.

Michael glanced up at him, his glossy black hair hung at the sides of his face and his eyes looked ahead, impassively. He did not look that old himself, thought Michael.

"I'm 14," Michael eventually replied, tentatively.

"Hmm," The man called Amon grunted, "Very young."

"Very young for what?"

thought Michael as the elevator activated, carrying him upwards.

He mulled over the worrying words whilst at the same time trying to regain his composure after the drugs, the two were fairly mutually exclusive, so he settled for a vague, almost certainly drug-induced, calm.

Entering the office, Michael had to restrain himself from gagging on the smell. Stale cigar smoke mixed with the odour of a man who worked long and hard hours, and the boy felt his headache begin to pound again. He held his breath and willed the pain to go away, he sensed that if there was ever a time he needed to be together, this was it.

"Take a seat" a deep voice said.

Michael jumped, he had been so busy dealing with his headache, he had not noticed the man seated behind a large desk.

Hoping that his flinch had not been noticed, he took the seat in front of the desk, and sat in what he hoped was an appropriate manner, sensing that something serious was happening to him.

"So you're our hacker then?" The man continued,

"Umm, I think so" Replied Michael nervously, sensing from the way the man paused, that some admission of guilt was required.

"May I ask why you felt the STNJ was a worthy target?" continued the man.

Michael blanched slightly, and quickly ran through options in his mind. What could he say that would make him seem any less guilty? What about his past hacks, would they come back to haunt him? How much should he admit to? He ran options through his mind, and decided that in this instance, the truth, no matter how unbelievable it sounded, was his best recourse.

"Because it was there" he answered, trying to sound as sincere as possible, after all, it was the truth, well, most of it.

The older man looked for a second, then nodded at the black-haired man, who Michael knew was called Amon. Amon grabbed Michael around the neck, holding him in such a way that it was clear that his neck could be broken with the minimum of effort. The younger boy gulped as best he could against the hold.

"So," Continued the boss "Why did you hack into STNJ? Who paid you and why?"

"Honestly, sir" Michael's voice rose in fear, and a tremble appeared in it which had not been there before "I only did it because I saw it mentioned in police reports and was curious. You've got to believe me, nobody paid me. No one's ever paid me to hack, I only do it for fun!"

He realised that his voice was starting to sound frantic, but he could not help himself. He was terrified.

"So why is there a plane ticket in your name for a flight to America, flying out tomorrow? Why had you got plans to get away?"

"Shit!" Michael thought.

His bloody parents, first they were going to send him away, now he was going to get killed for it! Dammit, it was typical things would work out that way!

"No, you misunderstand, sir, with all due respect. My parents were going to send me away to some American school for troubled children" he blushed slightly as he spoke, he sensed that it was not such a great idea for this man to know that even his parents thought he was a delinquent.

"I think you're lying" responded the man, and he nodded to Amon, who tightened the pressure around Michael's neck.

"No, I swear, I swear it's true. Christ" he swore in English "I don't know how to convince you, but it's all true, it's not the first hack I've done, but no one paid, it was just for fun"

"Just for fun? Are you having fun" the boss chuckled, without humour.

Michael fumed momentarily, he longed to shout "Do I look like I'm having fun?" but Amon had tightened his grip momentarily, and he could not speak.

"So" Boss continued, "why should I not just have you killed right here? You seem like an intelligent young man, I'm interested in your opinion"

Michael realised the need to tread carefully, this was not a good position for him to be in, and he was well aware that any minute, his neck could be cracked and he would be dead. Vaguely he wondered what it would feel like. Not something he wanted to experience, he decided, and thinking for a second, he responded

"Because I know your system, I've seen its weaknesses, and I know how to fix them. I also know that you don't have anyone to coordinate hunts, and so hunters have got injured because no one really knows what is going on."

He took a deep breath and decided he had nothing to lose from going for the hard sell

"I can fix those problems. You don't realise it yet, but you need someone like me, and it seems silly to kill me, then for you to have to wait for a long time for someone else like me to come along." He took a breath, hoping that he had not over-egged the pudding.

"Hmm," The Boss looked thoughtful, and Michael braced himself for the snap,

"I must admit, you make some interesting points, Michael Lee. I will have to consider it. Amon, take him downstairs,"

"Umm," Michael interjected nervously "my parents will be expecting me, they'll worry." He trailed off.

"Michael, think about it, an open window on the ground floor and you knowing that they were going to send you away tomorrow. For someone who claims to be intelligent, you are not thinking very logically. As far as they are concerned, you have run away. When I decide what to do with you, the next phase will be activated. that is all you need to know for now"

With that, Amon released his hold on the boy's neck and hauled him upright, before escorting him out of the office and back down to the holding cell, undoing the cuffs and lowering him onto the floor before exiting, locking the door as he went.

Michael sat on the floor for a good while, thinking. He had done his best in front of the boss, he really did not want to die. It would be just ridiculous, to get killed for a hack he'd only done by accident, and had only been caught at by his own stupidity. He started to cry, and had to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to make himself stop. He did not want to show any weakness in front of these people. But as the hours wore on, he was unable to maintain control, and finally, overtaken by frustration, fear, exhaustion and anguish, he curled up in a corner and sobbed and sobbed until he fell into an exhausted sleep.

He was shaken awake, though not roughly, by Amon.

"Zaizen wants to see you again" he said, simply.

Michael got up slowly, stiff from sleeping on the cold floor and wiped his face on the hem of his T shirt.

"Come on" continued Amon, "we can go past a washroom on the way so you can tidy yourself up."

A few minutes later, Michael was again standing in front of the boss, whose name he now knew was Zaizen, shaking with fear, sure that this would be it. He had noticed that Amon was wearing gloves this time, and was poised, waiting for a signal, to do the deed and dispose of him. He trembled slightly, feeling a chill across his skin and a sudden desperate need to visit the toilet. He tried to suppress these feelings, trying to remain together and in control in front of the man who held life in his hands. He almost wished for the drugs, at least before they had taken the edge off his fear and had hidden the emotions of terror from him. Then Zaizen spoke.

"You have caused me a great deal of thought, Michael Lee. By rights, your life is mine, and I should have you killed right here to prevent what you now know getting into the hands of my enemies. But, you are right, you do have useful skills. I have been looking at your files and the reports from the analysis of your computer system, you have definitely been around the virtual country, so to speak, and you appear very talented. So, I have decided this. I will not kill you today."

Michael glanced up, a slight glimmer of hope appearing in his mind.

"Provided" he continued "you agree to certain rules. You will work for us, you will only hack to obtain information necessary for us, and you will commit yourself to this organisation. You will be expected to give your entire loyalty to STN-J and SOLOMON and to the Hunt. To ensure this, you will have all ties with your old life broken. You will not leave the building without my express permission, which, let me tell you, I will not grant lightly. You will be dead to the outside world, you will have no connections with it aside from those which are necessary for your work, and you will commence a new life here, working for us. Should you break any of these conditions, you will die. Should your loyalty waver, you will die. Make no mistake, this is not an easy path. If you cannot tolerate it, it is best for you to say now, and die painlessly, than break a rule and die later."

Michael sat, speechless, for several minutes. He could see the stark choice laid out in front of him, slavery or death? He supposed it was only what he deserved for having the stupidity to get caught, but that did not make the choice any easier. After a long time, he reached a decision.

"I don't want to die" he said simply. "I will do my best to stick to the conditions"

The Boss cocked his head to one side and looked intently at the boy, who was trembling before him. He nodded, then glanced at Amon. Lost in his own thoughts, Michael failed to notice the meaningful look which passed between then, and was therefore taken by surprise when he was grabbed in the same neck-breaking hold as before.

"Shit" he thought to himself, he had agreed, he had humiliated and abased himself and now they were going to kill him anyway. Instead, Zaizen got up from behind his desk and wrapped a necklace around his neck. It was held by chain, with a dogtag attached, but the chain was so short, to prevent him pulling it over his neck, he could not read what was on the tag.

"Sit still" commanded the Boss, as he reached to his desk and picked up a soldering iron, lighting it, he soldered the chain onto the dogtag, it was unremovable.

"That is your tag, Michael. It will serve as a reminder of what you agreed. it will remain around your neck until the day you die, however far away that day is. Now Amon, show our latest recruit to the office, please."

Michael followed, numbly. One leg in front of the other, in auto-pilot, hand swinging loosely by his sides. How had it come to this? A prisoner, no, a slave, for life. A sentence handed down by "boss," judge, jury and executioner and him never to see anyone he loved ever again. He had a sudden visualisation of his mother receiving word he had died, presumably they would as he had run away, then "find a body" in another couple of days. With visceral clarity, he envisaged her pulling the sheet away from a body in a morgue and collapsing with grief, sobbing into the arms of his father. He could not help but gasp at the enormity of his revelation, he still loved his family, even though they had planned to send him away. At that moment, in his mind, he heard the noise of a prison door slamming shut, and just as he walked into the main office, he knew, beyond all doubt, that all choice had been taken away, and his life was now in the hands of another. Taking a deep breath, he walked into the main office as though he were walking into a cell.


	4. Chapter 4

_Glasses and death_

In his first week of working at STNJ, Michael had brought all sorts of changes to bear. Staying up late into the night, he had adjusted the communications gear so that communication during hunts was more reliable. He was finding new sources of information on witches which enabled the Hunters to attack targets with far more precision. He was revolutionising hunting at STN, the Hunters themselves all agreed on that, and their original suspicion at the introduction of a fourteen year old kid with a history of delinquency, soon melted away. Michael was throwing so much into his work, however, that Amon's partner, a woman named Karasuma Miho, began to get concerned for him, fearing that he was using work to immerse himself and repress emotional turmoil. She did not realise how bad it was for him, however, until one night when she returned to the office late, having left her communicator on her desk.

It was around 2 am when she slunk back to the office, hoping to collect it without anyone noticing. It was a condition of employment that all employees have access to their communicators at all times, so for her to be without it, could put her in quite a bit of trouble. In her bleary haze, she had forgotten Michael, and nearly jumped out of her skin when the bundle of clothes below a desk grunted. Looking down, she saw the teenager curled up in a dusty heap, fast asleep, still in his clothes with work on his screen, looking like he had succumbed to exhaustion at his desk. Of course, it had never occurred to her where he might sleep or what he did when he was alone in the office. Looking down again, she saw he was still wearing his glasses, and she reached down carefully to remove them, concerned that the boy would injure himself. As her cold hands brushed the frame, though, something black and horrible shot into her mind.

She usually had her Craft well under control at all times, but her tiredness combined with the strength of the emotion, was enough to break down her barriers. She felt a sudden despair, deep and twisted. She gasped with the intensity of the emotion, and knew suddenly how close Michael was to suicide. She debated shaking him awake to speak to him, but as she considered it, he groaned and awoke by himself. Shocked to see her crouching over him, he scooted away, sitting up so fast he banged his head on the desk. Grunting with pain, he froze and looked at her with deep suspicion. Karasuma, discomfited by the silence, spoke first,

"I'm sorry, I just came back here for my communicator and saw you asleep. I thought I should take your glasses off so you would not hurt yourself."

"Thank you," The boy replied quietly, getting himself together. "I'm sorry, I haven't had much sleep lately"

"I can imagine" smiled Karasuma, "Why are you down here anyway? Haven't; they given you a bed?"

"No," he replied quietly, then, glancing around the offices, he said nervously "I don't have anything, not even a change of clothes. I don't know what to do about it, I don't know, I don't know anything" he trailed off again, fear and exhaustion etched deep into his young face.

Karasuma looked closely at the teenager, who looked every bit his fourteen years in the moonlight. He was young, frightened and completely disorientated and, she realised from her scrying, seriously considering suicide. Slipping off her coat, she said

"Here, use this as a blanket for tonight and sleep on the couch. I'll talk to the chief in the morning,"

He half-smiled hopefully for a moment before the nervous look came back on his face as he replied

"But won't you get cold going home?"

"No, it's OK, I drove" answered Karasuma as she stood to leave. "Try and sleep tonight, things will look better in the morning"

She tried to ignore the doubtful look which cut through the fear on the hacker's face.

What kind of organisation was she a part of which treated children like that, which locked them up with no regard for their needs or fears? The type of organisation that people join when they don't have a choice, she realised. She would be lying to herself if she thought she had any more of a choice than Michael, than any of them. She had known from puberty, when combined with the physical pains which racked her body, she had felt the searing emotional pain of those around her, that she was something different. And those who are different must be contained for the good of society. She had repeated the mantra to herself day in day out for years,

"Witches must be contained for the good of society, their powers must be constrained and controlled. You will become a witch if you lose control. Do not lose control!"

But her constraint did not mean that Michael should suffer, now she knew what he was feeling and how bad his life was, she could not be silent. She resolved to talk to the Chief in the morning, her last thought before her sleeping pills kicked in and she drifted off into a dark sleep.

Karasuma stood in the Chief's secluded office the next morning. He was not Boss, Zaizen, but was one below him in the chain of command, and as such, would have responsibility for Michael's day to day life. She had noticed the boy as she had come in, sitting in front of his computer as usual with a spare communicator in pieces on the desk, fiddling with it. Her coat was neatly hung up on the coatstand, but she could see traces of dust on it, and was pleased that it seemed he had slept in it. She glanced at Michael again through the glass wall in the chief's office

"Sir, the kid is desperate, you can't expect him to live like this. He doesn't have anything. Not even a bed, nothing,"

"Well, maybe he should have thought of that before hacking in" replied the short, balding Chief Kosaka, officiously

"Oh sir, that's ridiculous. Whatever he did, he's here now and we've surely got some sort of responsibility to him. He's a kid! He at least needs a bed and some clothes. And what about food?"

Kosaka pasued for a minute, then called to his assistant

"Hattori, are Amon and Takahashi there?"

"Yes" replied the assistant

"Ask them to come in"

Amon and Takahashi entered the room.

"We were discussing our latest recruit" Kosaka began. "How do you feel he's getting on? Is he an asset worth keeping? Is he worth spending resources on?"

The three Hunters exchanged looks. Karasuma spoke first

"Since he's been here, hunting efficiency has improved. We can communicate better, we have better information before starting out on a hunt"

Takahashi added

"It's a complete improvement, he's been such a fast learner, on his first day here he got into the city surveillance grid and that was the thing which enabled us to hunt Sakata successfully. I definitely think we should keep him"

Kosaka looked to Amon, the unofficial leader of the Hunter group

"Give him what he needs, " said Amon, "he's an asset"

And so he got a room, a bed, some clothes, food and toiletries. The cheapest anyone could find for him, but the essentials none the less. His life gradually settled in to some kind of routine, nap for a couple of hours each day, then pass out for fifteen, even twenty hours on a Sunday to make up for it, and eating junk food every day to give him enough sugar and energy to make it through. He concentrated on researching witches, providing information, guiding the hunt, then, late at night when there was nothing else to do, he worked on his own projects. It was the only way he could maintain any sanity, any sense of self.


End file.
